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Stern warnings didn't work, so Northeastern will appeal to student pride to curb off-campus problems
By adamg on Thu, 09/22/2011 - 8:30am
The Huntington News reports on a new college initiative to reduce town/gown friction by getting students to sign a pledge promising to deport themselves as true Huskies when off campus. Northeastern students were already required to pledge not to be knuckleheads when among the general public:
She said the [old] policy also contained "really strong language," that made it too stern for students to respect.
"[The pledge] is supposed to be something more proactive that really boosts Husky pride, in addition to making sure that we really do behave and model the way Northeastern wants us to look as students," Caron said.
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Comments
Why is it so hard?
Or, more to the point, why are these little darlings leaving home at legal adult age in a state where they are not able to behave like adults?
I almost wonder if they need to go through the sort of multi-week "grow yerself up damnit" orientation that our armed forces do?
I think you're thinking about
I think you're thinking about this wrong.
Students develop the most during their college years because, in general, it's the first time they're away from home and away from constant authority in their life making ethical decisions for them. By putting them in a boot camp/orientation environment, you're just delaying the inevitable. Ever notice how there's never an issues like this over the summer when colleges have their orientation? It's because the authority figures are constantly in their lives. Once they are separated from that, they're going to have ethical dilemmas presented to them that they're going to have to make decisions about on their own.
This sort of development is going to happen regardless of how much you try to delay it.
missing the missed point
Swirrly's point, as I read it, is the parents are at fault for not starting the weaning earlier. Boot camp, while including strong demanding leadership, is about building a strong self that is part of a team. I'm not suggesting boot camp, would have hated it myself, but then I was one of those tightly controlled kids who behaved poorly and couldn't make ethicak decisions in college.
Not delaying it at all
In fact, here's one of my favorite sites: http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/
Basic training isn't what you think it is, either. There are choices to make and consequences that you won't be able to avoid - something many of these kids have been isolated from in their natal homes.
Here, in my opinion, we see
Here, in my opinion, we see both a failing of society and a failing of the parents.
Today's parents, in today's Culture of Fear, simply hold on too tight. Brainwashed by programs that skirt the edge of responsibility such as "America's Most Wanted" (the concept of the show is not bad, but its presentation has contributed to a false attitude of constant danger), parents jump at shadows constantly because its been reported that a kid several states away was kidnapped in a van. Then, once the kids are forced to be set loose from what has been a tightly controlled, regimented environment, they both go a bit nuts, and they don't know what to do. I've seen it with friend's kids, and I'm currently seeing it with my niece who wasn't allowed to ride her bike down her street alone in rural NY until the age of 15.
Our culture has the same problem with drinking, sex, nudity, etc. We treat these things as if they're worse than assault and murder. France doesn't have a large teenage drinking problem. Why? French kids drink at home with their parents. It's no big deal to them. Here in the US you can be jailed for child abuse for giving your kids a drink. It's a drink, not arsenic for God's sake!
In a school several years ago a group of boys were caught peeping at a naked girl in the locker room...all but one. When the principal asked this particular boy why he had not participated he responded, "My parents and I are nudists. I see naked girls all the time. What's the big deal?"
We've just spent 20 years in a Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell dog-and-pony show because we as a society are too immature to deal with two people having sex, while we let base thieves in the form of "respectable" bankers virtually destroy this nation and planet - our whole way of life - and get away with it.
And we wonder why our kids have problems. It's no secret to me!
I also wondered.
How many kids walk to school today compared to 10,20,30 years ago? Is it really more dangerous today?
time management
They have too much homework to spend time walking.
Schools don't allow them to walk!
Many schools prohibit students from walking, or walking alone before they are 11 years old.
Sad, isn't it.
I was told that my kids had to be in 5th grade to walk home alone from his after school program - even if I furnished a note saying that I gave him permission. Isn't that ridiculous? That is exactly how lame administrators take over the job of parenting, though. So don't blame the parents.
More schools are located in suburban areas without sidewalks, crosswalks, etc. and at longer distances from houses, too.
Cars are valued over kids
People worship at the temple of automobiles and it's no wonder that nobody wants to walk down the street anymore, it's dangerous even for adults.
I walked to elementary school myself most of the time, but that was over 20 years ago. And my neighborhood was an older area, developed prior to the automobile.
I read of a case even where new parents were not allowed to walk home with their newborn. They had to have a car come and pick them up, even though they lived only 3 blocks away!
Even worse
Is that fact that parents these days love to park as close as they can to schools (often times illegally in live parking zones) to pick up their precious 12 year olds!!!
Feminism
All societies place controls on youth to direct them to develop the right way. Modern Feminism quickly turned its focus from total sexual liberation to find a language and purpose that would allow women to restrain access by men.
I agree with you that it would be interesting and novel if we could present sex and the pursuit of it through alcohol in some logical way, but we can't avoid the fact that most of humanity manages this through religious and social clampdown. Logic doesn't have much to do with it, unless you are looking for some underlying cause, and in that case it won't be convincing. It won't make anything happen.
Colleges have a very short history of being the kind of institution they are today. Academics will focus on educational means to stop partying, but if they are really interested in bringing back an age of honor, then they will need to include enforcement of their rules and throw kids out of college when they dishonor the name of the school. Until that happens they will rely on the local community to handle enforcement.
Oh, I see
This must be why very secularized and modern universities in western European countries don't seem to have many of these problems?
Or is it because they expect students to act like mature adults around alcohol because the drinking ages are 16-18 and not 21?
Oh maybe they just don't know how to party like us
?
"Le binge drinking"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1576168/...
Yea this isn't even a binge drinking issue though
This is an issue of hosting a party, having someone complain about the noise of that party, and then the police response that night, how the party hosts act during that initial police reaction, and then whether or not those party hosts have any more parties.
I've said this before and it doesn't get reported too often. The majority of college students I've encountered on loud party calls are very respectfull, sober, listen to police and neighbor requests to quell the parties, and actually do stop the parties and everyone is mature about it.
Stupid.
The old "P.L.E.D.G.E" was attached to our course confirmation on the student portal. I suppose I "signed" it a bunch of times, in that I clicked a little box that said "I agree" and never read the thing once. That said, I also haven't had the cops called on my apartment and I'm reasonably sure my neighbors don't hate me.
The new one will totally work though, because 19 year old kids' sense of school spirit to their $40,000/year institution totally outweighs their desire to get drunk and break stuff.
Completely agreed, but I
Completely agreed, but I think it has more to do with the administration being able to point to it and say "LOOK, WE DID SOMETHING! DON'T BE MAD AT US."
Oh you're absolutely right,
Oh you're absolutely right, it's shameless pandering to the Mission Hill residents.
Some of the Mission Hill
Some of the Mission Hill residents want students to go away. On the other hand, some property owners who also live on the Hill are suing over the building of the new YMCA dorm by NEU, saying it is taking money out of their pockets by moving kids out of the three deckers.
Yes, sane responsible people should not be yelling all night and drinking underage, but kids have been doing it on the Hill, and in Brighton and other places, for 10 years or more - if you still live there, it is kind of like living in Eastie and yelling about airplanes.
I think you meant to say
"Look, we did something. So don't SUE us!"
Nothing will change
A grow up orientation? Certainly one of the silliest things I've read on this site in a while...
As a Northeastern grad, and living in the area for the past 3 years, nothing is going to curb the partying that goes on there, no stern warning, or signing of any type of paper. You have a better chance of getting Menino to start speaking properly.
Have I thrown my fair share of ragers that got the neighbors upset? Sure. Have the cops come to my apartment before? Sure. But like someone said, it's all apart of the growing process, being on your own for the first time, etc..
How to take care of college drinking
"Saltz says sprawling university bureaucracies usually aren't well-suited to this kind of tough guy strategy. For one thing, they're run by educators, who tend to think they can simply teach kids to drink less. But when I asked him if there's any university out there that's having real, on-the-ground, sustained success, he immediately says yes. University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Their drinking reduction stats are the envy of the student affairs world.
Starting in 1998, the school teamed up with the city of Lincoln and declared an all-out war on out of control drinking-- a data-driven, goal-oriented war. Not only did they do the kind of police crackdown Saltz advocates, they attacked the problem from every possible angle, enlisting of bar owners, state legislators, liberal arts students, business students, high school principals. They lobbied to digitize Nebraska's driver's license to stop rampant fake IDs. They tried to knock down the average number of drinks on a student's 21st birthday from 14 to 7.
Linda Major, Assistant to the Vice Chancellor at UNL, was the general in this war from the beginning. She says breaking up wild parties in residential neighborhoods was one of the most controversial things they did early on. Also, one of the most effective."
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/epi...
How do you measure
The number of drinks on average a person has on their 21st birthday?
Someone standing in the corner with a clipboard?
FOURTEEN DRINKS??? Hell, on
FOURTEEN DRINKS???
Hell, on my 21st I had two.
Tired of this
As a Northeastern alum who has mercifully moved out of Mission Hill after several years there, I'm a little tired of my alma mater shouldering all the blame for the problems in the neighborhood.
Can we start recognizing that the kids from Mass Art and the MFA school do a lot of the damage to the neighborhood? Their numbers might be smaller, but they make up for it with their behavior.
I'm not saying that a fair number of the DBs in the area aren't NU kids. But I bet if we could get some sort of DB pie chart going, Mass Art/MFA would have a higher DB to non-DB ratio.